MLB Trade Rumors and News: Gearing up for the MLB Draft, players proving themselves, and other fun baseball happenings

The MLB Daily Dish is a daily feature we’re running here at MLBDD that rounds up roster-impacting news, rumors, and analysis. Have feedback or have something that should be the shared? Hit us up at @mlbdailydish on Twitter or @MLBDailyDish on Instagram.

• Don’t sleep on these 12 MLB players, who are having bounce-back seasons this year. Can you say fun baseball? Spoiler alert: Hunter Pence fans, you’re in the right place.
• The 2019 MLB Draft is very quickly approaching and a new generation of baseball players are ready to take their crack at the show, however this year the rules are a little different. Here’s now the new CBA affects how the draft operates this year.
• The Rockies are dealing with Trevor Story being banged up and the fact that the Dodgers are looking like they are going to be tough to topple in the NL West. They’ve called in some reinforcements as one of the top prospects in baseball, infielder Brendan Rodgers, made his debut for the team on Friday.
• Hyun-jin Ryu has turned into the Dodgers’ hottest ace. The lefty hasn’t allowed a run in his last 31-innings and has shown no signs of slowing down. Is this finally the year the Dodgers walk away with the World Series trophy instead of slinking off the field as the other team’s confetti pours down?
• The Giants’ outfield has been a bit of a mess this season as the team has yet to figure out who they can rely on out there. Our own Andersen Pickard takes a look at the potential options they have at their disposal and what they should do going forward.
• The Yankees have had a LOT of issues with injuries this season and it is frankly impressive that they have been able to perform as well as they have despite those injuries. Unfortunately, they got more bad news yesterday as they learned that Miguel Andujar was going to have season-ending shoulder surgery to repair a torn labrum in his shoulder.
• Though virtually every projection system, every prospect expert, and essentially everyone who has ever seen him play expected Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to rake in the big leagues immediately, he got off to an extremely slow start, coming into Tuesday night’s game with a brutal .191/.283/.234 slash line. But he quickly made up for his slow start as the Blue Jayskicked off a two-game series with the Giants, hitting the first two homers of his major-league career on a three-hit night — in arguably baseball’s hardest hitter’s park, at that — raising his OPS over 200 points in the process.
• Prepare to be shocked and surprised: The Marlins are even worse than we thought. Now, the next logical question: who, if anyone, is to blame for that?
• Chris Sale set an MLB record on Tuesday night, becoming the first pitcher in MLB history to strike out 17 or more hitters in seven innings or fewer. Unfortunately, manager Alex Cora’s decision to pull Sale — who allowed two runs on three hits and no walks over seven frames and 108 pitches — came back to bite him, as Brandon Workman blew the save, Ryan Brasier took the loss, and the Red Sox fell 5-4 to the Rockies in 11 innings.
• With Travis Shaw hitting the injured list, the Brewers called up top prospect Keston Hiura from Triple-A. The second baseman, ranked as the No. 15 prospect in all of baseball by MLB Pipeline, went 2 for 3 with a walk in his MLB debut on Tuesday night.
• The Yankees, a.k.a. The Walking Wounded, acquired recently-DFA’d first baseman/DHKendrys Morales from the Athletics on Tuesday night. He’s expected to see time as their designated hitter in the absence of Miguel Andujar (and the countless other individuals who were in line to see time at that spot before hitting the injured list themselves).
• We’re just weeks away from the draft, and our Cristiana Caruso kicked off our coverage at MLBDD by putting together a composite mock draft, averaging out the projections from MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo and ESPN’s Keith Law.
• Attention all sports betters and people who like a good David and Goliath story: the Braves are the small underdogs hosting Cardinals on Tuesday, and here’s everything you need to know in case you want to put your money where Brian Snitker’s mouth is.
• The White Sox likely didn’t have high aspirations for this year, but things got even tougher Monday as it was announced that starter Carlos Rodon was going to have to have Tommy John surgery and will be until at least mid-2020.
• The Rays bolstered their backstop situation by acquiring Travis d’Arnaud from the Dodgers over the weekend. Impressive work by the Dodgers to get any value whatsoever back for a guy who was on their roster for five days.
• The Blue Jays have acquired Edwin Jackson from Athletics and Edwin Jackson has acquired the uniform of his 14th major league team. The 35-year-old will be arguably the most healthy pitcher in the Blue Jays’ rotation, with Buchholz and Shoemaker going down with injuries within a month of each other.
• Speaking of which, Edwin Jackson is baseball’s ultimate vagabond. Yes, that is a good thing.
• Tyler Glasnow is expected to miss 4-6 weeks with a forearm strain, thus continuing this year’s curse of being a pitcher on the Rays. The silver linings? Glasnow’s MRI shows no ligament damage to his elbow, so the damage to his is *crosses fingers* not going to hurt him more in the long term.
• How Tommy Hottovy revolutionized the Cubs’ pitching staff.
• Hunter Dozier’s prospect star seemed to have faded after he struggled in his first six professional seasons. Dozier has arguably been the best player in the American League this season, though, and he looks to be developing into a legitimate star.
• The Braves’ Dansby Swanson had a rough couple of seasons in 2017 and 2018 at the plate. However, in 2019 he looks like a brand new hitter, and our own Stephen Tolbert took a look at what has changed for Swanson and if these changes appear to be sustainable.
• Our Andersen Pickard examines the early season trends in the AL East...you know, other than literally no one being able to stay healthy.
• There have been a ton of extensions recently around baseball, with many of them given to some of the game’s finest young stars. To keep up with all of the extensions we have seen, here is a tracker our own Cristiana Caruso put together.
• Not only is MLB implementing some rule changes over the next couple of years, but they are also workshopping other changes in the independent Atlantic League to see how things work or don’t work. Our own Stephen Tolbert took a look at these potential changes to see what impacts they could have on games.
• Let’s take a moment to be shocked and surprised: MLB’s revised roster rules could end up punishing the players. That’s thanks to a new limit on pitchers — while it’s yet to be confirmed, multiple reports have stated that come 2020, teams will only be allowed to carry 13 pitchers on their big-league roster — and a significant reduction on September call-ups.